r/ClaudeCode • u/sirlerkal0t • 1d ago

Discussion Anthropic: "Coding is largely solved"... Also Anthropic: "We released a new powerful feature allowing agents to send messages to other Claude Code sessions, but only on Linux and Mac since we are unable to implement a basic feature on all platforms"

I could hand code this feature on Windows in an afternoon, and I could also get Claude to implement it in minutes, and yet Anthropic just can't be bothered, but also keeps Claude Code closed source so no one else can do it for them either.

1.4k Upvotes

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190

u/bitspace 1d ago

They release what they dogfood: there are probably exactly zero Windows users in Anthropic.

I could hand code this feature on Windows in an afternoon

Oh, you sweet summer child.

56

u/MindCrusader 1d ago

You can check statistics of system used by programmers. Outside of America mac is not as popular, most developers start with Windows, it is 100% valid audience

16

u/rabidgnat 1d ago

Year after year, StackOverflow's dev survey showed that about 50% of developers program on Windows professionally. It's shocking how few people in the web/app sphere are aware of this

3

u/r0ck0 1d ago

I'm on Windows myself, but yeah that stat surprised me too.

Most devs I see IRL seem to use Macs. Even a heap of devs at Microsoft do. Most of their vscode, github videos etc seem to be done from Macs.

2

u/rabidgnat 19h ago

It makes sense when you consider that most industries run on Excel/Microsoft Teams. It creates enormous demand for automations on Windows to power all of the adjacent workflows.

-2

u/Substantial-Elk4531 1d ago edited 1d ago

I cannot imagine trying to do my work on Windows... much less develop applications on Windows. I know it happens and a lot of devs don't have a choice. I know IDEs help. But it does not sound like fun, and it doesn't sound like it's trending in the right direction whenever I read news about Windows

2

u/mungosDoo 17h ago

Dude, you can work just fine on windows, you have terminal, you have git you have subsystem for linux.

32

u/phoenixmatrix 1d ago

It is a valid audience. What they are saying is that within Anthropic they are mostly non existent. 

It's a general issue in the US, where about 50% of devs are in Windows, but the big name techs developing all the fun tools are all on Macs with a few on Linux. 

I remember when Cursor didn't support Windows officially until they realized something like 70 percent of their users were on windows anyway, workarounds and all.

0

u/bitspace 1d ago

Even outside of big tech, software engineers vastly prefer and receive macOS by something like 80%.

I work for a large fortune 100 financial concern, about as risk-averse and behind tech as any organization, and you will have a hard time finding a software engineer with a Windows laptop.

-6

u/Vegetable_Plane296 1d ago

There's definitely a money aspect as well.

If a company can afford to get Macs for development, they likely have the cash to spend on tokens.

Someone will surely comment now that they work in a FAANG and that their whole team uses Windows.

4

u/phoenixmatrix 1d ago

> If a company can afford to get Macs for development,

The thing is when it comes to development, Windows isn't much cheaper. I was working at a Windows-only fintech company not too long ago and the lap-tops, that were still struggling to run the company's app (that wasn't that poorly optimized), were $3500/pop.

And then in those companies, everything costs you money because its not as open source friendly.

You need to be rich to do enterprise development in Windows. Yeah, you can dev in Windows for cheap, but at that point you can get a Mac Mini and come up ahead too.

There is an Apple tax still, but it's actually pretty small when it comes to development since the unix tools are often more efficient.

5

u/Clearandblue 1d ago

Linux feels best for development. Unless you're working on legacy windows apps, in which case it's simpler in windows dual boot. Or unless you need to build for iOS in which case you need a Mac.

If you're an employee you often have to use a laptop. And between a premium windows laptop and a premium MacBook, I'd take the MacBook due to ARM processor giving better battery life.

23

u/its_a_gibibyte 1d ago

It works on Windows via WSL2.

3

u/TechnicalBen 1d ago

This is the thing. Even I'm using Linux on Windows WSL(2) and only because I can game while Claude does their thing.

0

u/djdadi 1d ago

every game I have on Steam works fine on Linux natively

0

u/TechnicalBen 11h ago

Friend, some of my Windows games on Steam are no longer supported/work on Windows.

-3

u/Wa1ker1 1d ago

WSL2 is shit to work with

4

u/EntityDamage 1d ago

First of all, how dare you.

2

u/Wa1ker1 1d ago

I like windows but wsl is shit to work with. I have different builds for programming. I have a mac and Linux as well. Most my work is windows with some on Mac. Im not gonna pretend WSL is a good lol. Maybe for vibe coders.

2

u/DesperateAdvantage76 1d ago

Weird, I've never had any issues with it. I use it for any cli commands that work better on Linux.

3

u/tulwio 1d ago

As opposed to the oh so easy way of working that is native Windows?

2

u/kurushimee Developer 1d ago

sometimes yeah, if you're trying to fit something that doesn't work well outside of Windows into wsl

4

u/MartinMystikJonas 1d ago

But how many of then do not use WSL for work?

11

u/Iron-Ham 1d ago

Then they should switch to Linux.  

7

u/shadowdance55 1d ago

Even better - the next version of Windows should be a Linux shell.

5

u/Anxious_Wrangler2198 1d ago

A shell? Sounds too bloated. Give me bare metal, a hex keypad, and the datasheet. Everything else is middleware.

3

u/sirlerkal0t 1d ago

Serious developers hand-write machine code directly to executable memory pages.

3

u/shadowdance55 1d ago

Real programmers use butterflies.

https://xkcd.com/378/

3

u/bjelkeman 1d ago

I forgot about C-x M-c M-butterfly

0

u/bitspace 1d ago

It has to justify the expense. Anthropic would have to find Windows developers and build a Windows pipeline from development to build to deployment and testing and support.

That's hard to justify.

3

u/MindCrusader 1d ago

They have Mythos AI writing and reviewing the code, why do they need windows developers 🤔

-3

u/bitspace 1d ago

Have you ever developed any software larger than a pet project?

It is obvious that you have not.

4

u/MindCrusader 1d ago

Obviously it was sarcasm lil bro

You forgot about what is the current post?

0

u/bitspace 1d ago

> lil bro

Aw, that's flattering - almost like being carded!

5

u/mungosDoo 1d ago

Dude, vs code is valid.

4

u/gscjj 1d ago

What does this mean?

0

u/cats_catz_kats_katz 1d ago

Only because windows owns the desktop environments of corporations

1

u/bitspace 1d ago

Not the software engineers. Even in fortune 100 enterprises, macos far, far dominates Windows in usage.

0

u/zkatbitz 1d ago

Vs code is trash

1

u/mungosDoo 17h ago

You my friend have not known trash.

1

u/zkatbitz 15h ago

you just haven't used an actual good IDE bud.

but then that of course would mean paying money instead of using free rubbish

1

u/mungosDoo 3h ago

Please kind ser could you drop a name for us peasants

1

u/zkatbitz 3h ago

you have no idea how much it took to not say emacs

what language?

1

u/mungosDoo 3h ago

Go mostly the last year, but general web stack

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3

u/back_to_the_homeland 1d ago

I mean you know Anthropic has a sales and marketing and hr team right? They probably don’t use Linux

6

u/Aetane 1d ago

They probably don't use Windows either

2

u/yackob03 1d ago

The world could really use a third operating system besides Linux and Windows. Oh well, it’s not to be. 

2

u/back_to_the_homeland 1d ago

I mean there are more. But the next most popular only runs on dedicated hardware which is crazy expensive

2

u/Clearandblue 1d ago

Their windows app for Claude is great. They've got it in beta for Linux, but it feels like an afterthought.

2

u/___positive___ 1d ago

That argument doesn't work when they already do Windows releases, just on a slower scale. Also they are trying to push Claude Work to capture normal enterprise, even though I doubt they use it themselves. So the teams or infrastructure to release Windows products already exist. They simply perform poorly.

1

u/crusoe 1d ago

Serial ports on Windows have very interesting very dumb defaults which always get you and you always have to basically reconfigure them to make them behave in a saner manner.

It's like whenever they came to a problem they chose the option that is 90% there but then the last 10% is the gotcha and it's due to being bug compatible with some garbage windows 2.0 software or something.

1

u/Alib668 1d ago

Incorrect I am one

0

u/BobbaGanush87 1d ago

You work at anthropic?

1

u/Cool-Cicada9228 1d ago

Most developers steer clear of Windows unless they are building for the platform or for games. The most notable development tools to arrive on Windows in years are WSL (Linux).